The Day a Sewer Flooded My Dorm Room

There are plenty of disappointing times in life when we all love to say, “S*%t happens.” On this particular day, however, my roommate and I got the meaning of that phrase straight in the face. Our dorm’s sewer line backed up so much that our neighbor’s toilet began belching out old toilet water, leaking through their room and into ours.

The day began pretty normally. After an eventful Saturday night, we both slept in pretty late and didn’t go down to brunch until nearly noon. Since I was still working on my coffee, I sat back in the cafeteria while my roommate and friends headed back to their rooms. I had only been sitting there three minutes when I heard my name from across the cafeteria. One of my friends was waving like crazy, beckoning me to go over to the entrance. She told me that the girl who worked behind the front desk could see from the security cameras that there was water spilling out the back of the building from the second story.

It was coming from the room next to mine.

Worried out of my mind, I practically ran upstairs to my room. The awful stench of pee and poo filled my nose as I stepped into the hallway of my floor. Down the hall stood a maintenance man, my neighbors, and the building’s day director. Opening my door, I found my roommate and suite-mate in a serious freak out. A large puddle of stinky water had made its way under our beds, soaking my white bed-skirt and all the stuff under our beds, including my roommate’s laptop. It was spreading.

Screaming profanities, we frantically tried to save our stuff from the foul flood. We didn’t care that our shoes were getting soaked every time we took a step between our beds. Everything that touched the ground, even if it wasn’t near the puddle, had to be placed up on a higher spot or moved into our suite-mates’ room. I can’t even begin to describe how frustrated and grossed out we were, despite the fact that I started laughing. The situation was (almost) hilarious. We even started using some pretty bad puns. One of our friends remarked, “I wonder who the poopitrator was!”

Our room really couldn’t light a candle to the situation next door, though. Human waste, tampons, and even condoms were literally floating about our neighbors’ room. The smell was putrid. At least we could step foot into our room to try and salvage our things. They physically couldn’t go farther than a foot into their room without stepping in something disgusting. Apparently their toilet had done some weird things in the past, like bubble up or slightly overflow on its own, but nothing compare to this. Their bathroom connects directly to the sewer line at the bottom of the building, and when the tank started acting funky, they receive the brunt of it. And since the line was blocked, every flush at this point went from one of the many toilets thirteen stories up and into theirs, gushing into their room and ours!

After a long day of waiting and wading around in rain boots with our things, building maintenance finally sucked up all the water and waste in all three rooms affected. It took two days for them to replace the carpets, treat the floors, and sterilize everything. In the meantime, we refuges lived in friends’ rooms and sorority houses, all of whom happily accepted us. Our neighbors’ rooms took a little longer to be  cleaned, due to the hazardous solid waste, but within a short time we all fell back into our regular routine, although the new carpet smell did give me a headache. At least some good came out of this, like bonding time with our neighbors, who turned out to be really nice girls. We also learned a few valuable lessons.

One, always store your valuables in elevated places. Two, think before you flush solids down the toilet. And three: you truly don’t realize how many friends you have until poop seriously hits the fan.